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460 SLI vs MSI 7850?

habbyster

habbyster

habbyster

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Joined
26 Aug 2012
Posts
130
What would perform better for playing general games, FPS's and anything new that comes out. I already have a Palet 460 under my bed unused, would the FPS difference between 460 SLI and my current 2GB 7850 be justifiable for the £90 spend?



ATI HD 7850 TWIN FROZR III 2GB OC EDITION
i5 3570k 3.40GHz
GIGABYTE Z33-D3H
8gb HyperX 1600 MHz RAM
Antec 500W PSU
HyperEvo 212
 
I reckon the 460 SLI will have more graphical grunt however 460 SLI will be hampered by its 1GB VRAM limit. You'd be better off selling your 460 and buying a 7850 or 7870XT if funds allow.
 
Bacon? said:
I can run out of VRAM on my single 6850 in games. SLI 460 would easily run out of VRAM.
Click to expand...

how do you know you're running out of vram? review above has much more credibility and proves 1gb is fine for full hd gaming even with AA.... on a 7850 at least.

"The Club3D HD 7850 RoyalQueen comes with only 1 GB memory, whereas most other HD 7850 cards on the market have 2 GB. When I first got the card, I was extremely sceptical whether such capacity could provide enough performance for the latest and greatest titles. Now, after finishing the review, I am impressed. At resolutions up to, and including, 1920x1200, the card is just as fast as the HD 7850 with 2 GB, if not a little bit faster. Only at resolutions of 5760x1080 (Eyefinity), and at 2560x1600 in some games, did we see a performance penalty from the smaller frame buffer. Personally, I don't consider this an issue, because a single HD 7850 is just too slow for these resolutions anyway."
 
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Frame rate drops massively while GPU less than 80% usage.

The 7850 defientley needs the 2GB for a lot of moden games to play at ultra - high res at 60 fps. If not why would the 2GB version not be the most popular and reccomended?
 
Bacon? said:
Frame rate drops massively while GPU less than 80% usage.

The 7850 defientley needs the 2GB for a lot of moden games to play at ultra - high res at 60 fps. If not why would the 2GB version not be the most popular and reccomended?
Click to expand...

That could be caused by a plethora of other things rather than vram limit. I have to disagree, 1gb is fine for a 7850 and it actually performs a bit better according to techpowerup. 2gb is recommended because most people think you need 2gb but you actually don't, for futureproofing or perhaps because there's not much price difference.
 
i run sli 460 gtx and they do run out of vram in games like bf3 crysis 2and farcry 3..although they are still quite good for wot they are..it all depends wot gfx settings you expect to run and wot you are happy with
 
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janksteruk said:
i run sli 460 gtx and they do run out of vram in games like bf3 crysis 2and farcry 3..although they are still quite good for wot they are..it all depends wot gfx settings you expect to run and wot you are happy with
Click to expand...

how do you know you're out of vram and the performance drop isn't just caused by lack of gpu power?
 
I think two 460's will run faster than a 7850 (pre-overclocking), though when overclocked - and providing the 7850 is a decent clocker, I would think the 7850 will pull ahead by up to a fair amount.
 
only a few current games I have played use over 1300mb of vrm at 1920x1080p.
Bf3 used 1600 i think. I monitor using process explorer.

Buying a 7850 1gb makes no sense when future titles are bound to use more ram.
If you wanted to buy another 7850 for crossfire then the 2gb once again makes more sense than 1gb.
 
Sorry, some of you didn't seem to realise I already have the 7850!

Thanks for all the responses...but what would be the best next gfx card for me to get, and would the price increase be justifying the price tag?
 
spixelspixel said:
There is 0 difference between 1gb and 2gb for almost all current games @ 1920x1080. The 460 in sli would likely perform better but a single 7850 is a better choice.
Click to expand...

There are enough games that push enough beyond 1gb when trying to use high/ultra settings at 1920x res even with moderate levels of AA to make it completely and utterly pointless to go with a 1GB VRAM setup when 2GB and similiar or better speeds is an option.

There are several recent releases that I have to drop MSAA for FXAA so as not to overwhelm my GTX470s 1.28GB VRAM @ 1920x1080 and as it is they are right on the limit (the core performance isn't an issue, when the VRAM useage is low they can handle the extra AA load absolutely fine) - sticking a decent level of AA on pushes them over the edge and results in less smooth performance i.e. spikes that can't be attributed to the extra AA load.
 
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